Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
I go outside each morning to breath the air, take in the weather, and look around. My wardrobe is bare feet, gym shorts, and a tee shirt.
In today’s moment, accompanied by Quinn the Black Paw and Papi of the Ginger, I said, “It’s not bad out here, guys.” Quinn responded by rolling around on the patio while Papi scanned the perimeter for intruders.
After a few minutes, I returned inside and checked the temp on my small weather system. Thirty-one degrees F.
My winter skin is coming along well.
I’m excited about Winter Solstice. It’s the shortest day and longest night. I’m ready for more sunshine and light.
So says one side of me. Another side of me corrects me. “Ahem. The day and night are not longer or shorter. You’re speaking of periods of sunlight.”
Yeah, whatever. You understand what I mean. Do you need to be such a meaning Nazi?
To which that half replies, “Nazi? Really? Do you really believe that’s an apt expression? You read what Thomas Weaver wrote on North of Andover, didn’t you?”
“Yes, yes,” several halves say, while another half of me says, “Oh, give us a break. Must you be so damn literal all the feckin’ time?”
Meanwhile, another half of me is still on the original topic. They say with a sigh, “Don’t you love these long, dark nights? Doesn’t it feel cozy under the winter stars, quieter, and stiller?”
“Yes, I agree,” says my second half. “I can hear myself think then.”
I began recognizing that, once again, all my halves – I have at least three, or maybe four (they can hide in plain sight without warning) – are not in complete alignment. I like longer days of sunshine because they provide me more light to do things. I can make lists of things of what’s to be accomplished without factoring in bad driving conditions associated with the short winter days, and the early darkness. I dislike saying, “Well, it’s three forty-five. The sun will be setting in less than an hour.” And I dislike getting up, looking out the window, and saying, “Seven thirty. The sun should be rising soon.”
And, I feel the lack of sunshine in my soul and body during these short days. I do walk in the winter, and soak in whatever sunshine comes available. It frequently doesn’t feel like enough.
I like getting up at six in the morning and having sunshine streaming in the windows. I like going out at nine in the evening in time to catch the sunset’s beginning.
But winter and its long days do have a soothing effect on me. The holidays are the exception, but they’re human creations. Without the holidays, I feel like winter and the long hours of darkness provide me with an environment that helps me recuperate from the rest of the year. Like the earth, I’m resting, and preparing to grow again.
Of course, weather and the circumstances accompanying seasons are the chunky ingredients that throw tastes into different directions. The heat of the summer can be endured, but then a drought becomes extended, wildfires begin, and smoke pollutes the air. Winter’s cold is refreshing, but then the wind blows, and the ground freezes, and you walk carefully, lest a fall claims you.
I recognize the problem. There’s just no satisfying me and all of my halves. I suffer this same dichotomy with other life facets. It’s probably because I have too many halves. Like, I want to eat healthier, but damn, some of that food is just too damn tasty to turn down. Yes, I’ll have another piece of pie, please. Yes, make it al a carte! Pizza? Don’t mind if I do. Yes, let’s have a beer with that!
Then, one of the other halves speak up. “Ahem. Need I remind you that you had to loosen your belt today? Have you seen your profile? You look like Alfred Hitchcock.”
That half is strict, principled, and patient — and critical. It’s the frugal, intelligent half. It’s the half that says, “A car is transportation. It does not need to go two hundred miles an hour. Even one hundred miles per hour is more than sufficient. There are far more important qualities to a car than its top speed.”
It’s the half that reads labels and eschews food choices based on fat, sugar, and salt levels, or the principles of the company selling the food. This is the half of me that always returns shopping carts to the cart corral, and doesn’t even complain about others who didn’t put their cart away.
They don’t hesitate to complain to me, however. “Moderation, Michael. Mindful eating, Michael. Patience, Michael. Think of your health, Michael.”
Another half of me often rises to my first half’s defense when the third half is chiding me for my choices. “Leave him alone,” he’ll say. “Michael’s worked hard all of his life, and listened to you most of the time. He deserves to relax, cut loose, and over-indulge.”
“Yeah,” the first half says. “Thank you.”
That’s when it goes well. Other days, it’s like a clowder of cats fighting over the same patch of catnip. We aim for detente. All the halves are quiet now. I think they’re napping, except for this half, which is drinking coffee and writing, and another half, who is singing “Clocks.”
Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
Volcanos erupting in Japan and Indonesia, threats of missiles being exchanged between the U.S. and North Korea, Black Lives Matter, voter right suppression, Russia-gate, white supremacists, gun control arguments, protests, the Weinstein scandal, war refugees, Pacific Northwest and California wildfires and destruction, the Hurricane Maria disaster in Puerto Rico, hurricane and earthquake disasters in Mexico, hurricane destruction in several other American states, plans to build a wall on the southern U.S. border, the President threatening freedom of the press, the Vegas mass killer….
Contemplating it all over coffee brought to mind Billy Joel’s nineteen eighty-nine song from “Storm Front,” “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” He covered the headlines from nineteen forty-nine, when he was born, until the year the album was released, but the fire goes on.
At least, it feels like it on this cool, autumn morning in twenty seventeen.
Our outdoor air sucks. Need more?
Smoke from wildfires is filling our air. The Air Quality Index leaped to one hundred fifteen last night. DANGEROUS. It hasn’t been hot, only into the nineties. We open the house at night to cool it off, and then close the blinds and windows during the day. Opening the windows last night sent us into coughing fits as wet smoke smells wafted in. Eventually, we donned masks.
Today isn’t as bad. The A.Q.I. is in the fifties, and officially, moderate. Visibility remains down. It’s like a white-out beyond a a few hundred feet.
All this wildfire smoke has reduced my Fitbit activities. Walking is way down, to five miles a day average. It’s not as critical as many other issues resulting from wildfires. None of the fires are directly affecting our community. We feel for all those being evacuated in those areas, and appreciate the firefighters’ efforts. If this stuff is terrible for me, a guy in his early sixties who considers himself in good health, those with emphysema and other respiratory issues must be deeply suffering.
I took to the Orson Scott Card method for visualizing and organizing the novel in progress. O.S.C. talked about just drawing places, like a city, and then adding details. With each detail and area added or defined, entertain questions about why those areas and details exist. I’ve done this exercise before, with excellent results. I wasn’t disappointed this time.
I had been editing the novel’s first draft. Halfway through that process, I perceived a problem. A new ‘greater arc’ was required as the solution. I could be wrong, but this is how I decided to address the issue. It’s essentially an epic. I like epics. Bigger is better.
This was decided over a four day period. Then, after deciding it was necessary, I went on a reading sprint. I finished reading two novels, and read two others, in five days. I also read fiction stories and news articles online. This reading stimulated my writing juices and invigorated my writing dreams. I found myself re-committed to who I was, and what I was doing. It’s a matter of taking a deep breath, turning on the computer, and putting the ass in chair, and the fingers on a keyboard.
This new arc takes place on a planet where technology fails. An outpost is established using outdated technology. Suddenly, it’s like living in a frontier castle. I loved that difference in direction from my usual challenges of visualizing the far future and other intelligent races.
I drew the outpost on my computer, and brainstormed about how the lack of technology affects them, and solutions and work-arounds. The team living in the outpost are hunting for people, but can’t use their suits or vehicles. They fall back to horses. Having horses adds more problems and dimensions.
So do the powerful windstorms endured on the planet. That’s why the outpost becomes a castle; something stout enough to survive the windstorms are necessary. That’s the iceberg view of all the scenes, problems, and challenges realized. I don’t want to give away more. Drawing and brainstorming in this manner was a catalyst to my imagination. I scrambled to capture ideas an create an event timeline. It resulted in *shudder* an outline.
As an organic writer, the outline overwhelmed me. Suddenly, there it all was, this part of the novel mapped out in all its complications and key events. I could imagine, see, and hear them. Writing them was required. It’s daunting for an organic pantser. I decided I would scramble to write key scenes and moments, and patch them together with bridge and pivot scenes, and build the story in layers, much like I used to do when oil painting, or writing a business case, or analyzing data.
I think that whatever opened my creative floodgates also turned the dream valves to full open. I had six remembered dreams last night. Friends from my past were featured. My wife also made an appearance. Of course, maybe it was the eclipse opening the dream and creativity gates. Who can say?
Trying to capture details this morning diverted personal resources already earmarked for other activities. I resorted to dream summaries. The dreams were wild. Once again, my muses were prominently featured. They were attempting to guide and assist me in different manners. Sorting the chaos was a fascinating exercise.
Having your muses show up in my dreams injects high confidence levels. I felt empowered and emboldened when I awaken. Yet, being me, the confidence evaporates to more normal levels by midday. Having your muses and some higher beings populate your dreams and offer encouragement has a good thing. I’m certainly not going to kick them out.
Time to write like crazy, at least one more time. How about you, writers? Have you seen increased creativity? Maybe it is the eclipse.
Or maybe it’s the coffee.
I don’t know if I was the first to think it. How could I know? I didn’t tell anyone what I was thinking. It was too damn crazy. There were probably others who likewise noticed, but kept it to themselves. Because, what could we do?
When I began thinking it, I don’t know. I didn’t mark the date. Like the economy, or a war, it took a few months to get a true and complete sense of what was transpiring.
It began with people telling about miraculous recoveries from cancer, and other diseases and injuries on Facebook. Those stories swept across the media as newspapers and television networks noticed. Reporters hunting the stories found bigger stories, even as hospitals and government agencies added other elements.
People weren’t dying. Gunshot and stabbing victims recovered. So did people who overdosed. Burns healed. Drowning victims took sudden new breaths, startling everyone. Diseases went into remission. Those who needed assistance from machines, nurses, caregivers, and doctors were able to push them aside, walking, chewing, and wiping their own asses, without others’ help. Memories, speech, and motor control returned. Their vision and minds sharpened.
So many thought it a miracle, a proof of some God’s love. Meanwhile, the planet’s average temperatures jumped. Hurricanes and cyclones destroyed cities, but nobody died. Glaciers melted. The sea levels rose, as did the heat, shriveling crops. America’s Midwest dried up, becoming another dust bowl. Water grew scarce and precious. Unemployment climbed, because there was less need for taking care of the sick, dying, and dead. People cried and screamed in hungry pain. Animals were killed. Fights over food and water broke out. Then came the riots.
I was sure I knew what had happened. Sometime during the cover given by the eclipse, others invaded Earth. They were wiping us out by accelerating our climate change, and keeping us alive even as we starved. It was a soft invasion. They didn’t want us dead, just weak, so they could enslave us.
Guessing that’s what was happening, I’d taken quiet actions to make things as pleasant as possible for my family in our remaining days. There was no way to kill ourselves; there was no way to die. All we could do was wait.
After eleven months, Nate Silver published results. August 21, 2017, was day zero. That was the last day anyone had died. We should all remember that date, when we meet our new masters. I’m sure they’ll introduce themselves by giving us food.
And we’ll be so grateful, we’ll do what they want.
I’ve been going under during the last few days, consumed by smoke and heat. Hard hit with a sinus infection that induced impressions that my head and eyeballs were due to burst open with an alien presence, I had no energy and needed rest. Sleep, though, contemptuously dismissed my efforts.
My Fitbit, however, didn’t care.
The Fitbit doesn’t have an atom of empathy. Noticing that I was walking less on Friday, it said, “Come on, let’s step,” in its usual friendly manner that morning. By the late afternoon, its tone shifted to, “Are you going to move, you lazy slob?” On Saturday, it was asking, “Why do I bother to count? You’re not doing anything. Come on, get up.”
Instead of pestering me once every hour, it took to dinging me about every ten minutes. “Are you going to do anything today?” it asked with a sulking cadence.
“I told you, I’m not feeling well,” I answered it.
“So you’re not going to do anything.”
I popped Advil, and then gargled with warm salt water before answering. “I’m going to try to do something, just not right now. I’m having some tea first.”
“Malingerer,” it muttered back. “I want to go out.”
I put it on the cat. “There you go.”
“Hey,” the Fitbit said. The cat shook it off its paw with an angry, offended look. Neither of them were happy with me.
At three thirty that afternoon, I left the house to walk to a friend’s place to assist them with a computer problem. The weather was remarkably cool, and the smoke had dispersed enough to clearly see the Grizzly Peak across the valley. We experienced a temp spike while I was there. Coming home, it was much hotter, and I was much sweatier.
“Oh, you’ve at four miles,” my Fitbit said. “Why, you’re an Olympic athlete.”
There were no fireworks from the Fitbit that night. It settled into a sullen silence. Finally getting a few hours of sleep, I renewed my determination to reach my goals today. I noticed that the Fitbit hadn’t said anything.
“What’s the matter?” I asked it.
“I’m feeling a little under the weather,” it replied. “Do you mind if we just stay in today?”
With the thermometers teasing one hundred four degrees, I was returning home in the car. The DJ said, “This song is about air conditioning.”
Air conditioning? I puzzled what he could mean.
He continued, “This is “Need You Tonight.” With this weather as hot as it is, they have to be referring to air conditioning.”
Here it is, INXS, from nineteen eighty-seven.
I was checking the temperature for our area via Wunderground. It said, “104.3 F.” Underneath, it said, “Feels like 78 F”.
We wondered where they were, that they were so optimistically cool.
Today’s music, from two thousand eight, is by Lady Gaga. When I hear a song, I try understanding what’s being sung and the words’ meanings. “Poker Face” seemed ambiguous, at once about sex and gambling. I liked the combination because sex and love is a gamble taken, a roll of the dice, and relationships often become efforts in reading others’ expressions to discern agenda, meanings, and truth.
I later read that Lady Gaga wrote the song about her rock and roll boyfriends. That knowledge didn’t answer all my questions about the lyrics. Still, it’s a good song to stream as you beat the street in the heat.
“Anyone driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone driving faster is a maniac.”
George Carlin had it right. I stew behind other drivers, awaiting the day when they will be in a self-driving car, leaving me to self-righteously and serenely pilot my car around the roads the proper way.
I have categories for “them,” the other drivers that irritate me. Probably at the top of my list are bizarro drivers, employing a secret logic for their decisions. “School zone with a speed limit of twenty? I’ll go thirty-three. Residential area with a speed limit of twenty-five? I’ll go thirty-three. Country road where the speed limit increases to thirty-five? I better slow down to twenty-eight.”
WTF? I canna fathom their thinking. I’ve written it before and will do so again, their brains are wired backwards. Further proof of this is how they treat yield and stop signs with the exact opposite behavior directed by the sign, and the law behind the sign. It’s a yield sign, so they’ll stop. It’s a stop sign, so they’ll roll through. When “their lane” is ending, they don’t make an effort to signal, move over, merge and integrate, oh, no, that would be too logical. They just keep going straight, hanging onto their lane until others are forced to give way and let them in.
Arrrrrrr!
Let’s not even consider what the hell happens in traffic circles and parking lots. Both of them are like driving in the Thunder Dome. Add rain to the mix….
What is it with rain that it seems to make so many drivers frantic and more erratic? It’s as though the rain causes them to think, “Which out, it’s raining,” and their backward wired brains trigger the opposite of safe behavior. “It’s raining, let’s speed, and not use turn signals, and drive down the road straddling the dividing lines, because we want to be safe.”
Madness, I tell you, frigging madness. Add in some distraction, and OMG. The distraction need not be much. Construction in progress and police cars with flashing lights going off to one side, I can understand, but why are you slowing down to look at people walking dogs? Have you never seen people and dogs before? Are you looking for missing people or missing dogs? Are you not familiar with creatures walking?
This bizarro behavior afflicts cyclists, too. More than half of the cyclists that I encounter around our little town are on the sidewalks. All those great bike lines and bike paths? They seem to treat them like they’re lava zones that will kill them if they enter.
No, I don’t understand. But then, everyone else is an idiot or a maniac. I’m the only sane nut on the roads.
Michael Seidel, writer 